The eyes have it

This summer has been a bit tricky because I’ve had cataract surgery. I first realised that something was wrong about three years ago when I found myself compulsively cleaning my glasses, especially the right lens because somehow I could never get the grease off it.
When I had my annual eye-test I raised the issue, and my optician referred me to Furness General Hospital where a specialist examined me. He announced that I did have cataracts, but I was unlucky in that rather than ‘creeping in from one edge’ where I wouldn’t have noticed them for another ten or fifteen years, mine had developed smack-bang in the middle. He dismissed me with the comment that “It’ll probably be about three years before you need the operation, but you’ll know when you’re ready.”

He was right, this spring I decided that the situation was getting silly. So I saw my optician who referred me (via my doctor) back to FGH. There the team took over, I was seen by one of the surgeons, a Mr Singh who had them run all the pre-op tests, dates were fixed and I turned up for my first op.
Here I saw the care they were taking, because my eyesight was so bad (we’re talking jam-jar bottoms here,) Mr Singh had instructed the staff to re-run the checks from pre-op, this time using different baselines. With this extra data he picked the lens he was going to use and the operation went ahead.

Now in theory, with cataract surgery, when they remove the old lens, they can put in any lens you want. I just wanted decent eyesight. (Some people will have one eye for distance vision and one eye for reading.) So Mr Singh put the lens in and after a week I was back for a check up. My eye had been eight point something dioptres (very short-sighted) and he had aimed for -0.4 dioptres longsighted. (Getting zero, or perfect eyesight is damned near impossible except by accident). He’d achieved -0.35 which I thought was pretty damn good, and it impressed the nurse who did the tests.
The only problem is that my left eye was still eleven point something dioptres, which meant my eyes were twelve dioptres adrift. This meant my brain refused point-blank to believe they were looking at the same universe. My binocular vision just disappeared and I decided that I wasn’t safe to drive. I had about eight or nine weeks of this.

Then my Father-in-law fell and went into hospital for a broken hip. I was the one who visited him during the afternoons. This is necessary to try and help him fight off the confusion that comes to older people in institutions. What it meant was I was walking about nine miles a day to do this. I did look at the bus timetable. I could leave home later and get home earlier if I was walking than I could if I took the bus. Rural bus services aren’t what you’d call frequent, or fast.

Anyway then came the second operation. Within minutes of coming out of theatre, with my eye still numbed with eye drops and the pupil massively dilated, my binocular vision snapped back into place.
And the results?
Well my eyesight is better than it has ever been. I’ve had glasses since I was about five or six, and for normal purposes I no longer need them. I am slightly long sighted, but not a lot. For reading I have a pair of cheap £1 +2 magnification reading glasses, whilst at the computer I’m currently using an equally cheap set of +1 magnification reading glasses. Yes, Poundland’s finest.
But the other thing is the colours. Trust me in this, colours are amazing. Four days after the second operation (by which time my eyes had settled down,) I found I was just staring at the scenery for the sheer joy of seeing it. Blue is a really amazing colour, green as well.
Indeed there was a lady who was having her first eye operation when I was having my second. She had with her a rather nice, bright, cheerful Lavender anorak. Until she’d had her operation, she had thought it was just an interesting shade of grey.

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3 thoughts on “The eyes have it”

My Dad was pretty impressively short sighted and I think he had both his done on the same day. I’d never realised where my son inherited his eyes from and I still find it kind of strange to see my dad with no specs. My Mum had them too but she is just a bit long sighted, so she had one and then the other done and could still drive.

The thing about broken hips is that they give you a whole truckload of Morphine, both the people I know who’ve had one were off their tits on it. So you were right to do the walk, because when it comes to confusion, opiates don’t help. 😉 Glad you’ve had the second eye done now, it must be something of a relief.

Yes, I’m glad to have both eyes looking into the same universe 🙂
I know what you mean about morphine and the opiates. My late father had open heart surgery and one time when I went to visit him he was sitting in his bed watching the cricket on the TV. I couldn’t see the TV from where I was sitting so he would occasionally describe a good bit of the match or tell me who was doing what. It was a good match and he was enjoying it. The only problem is that the TV wasn’t plugged in.